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Complex problems consist of elements that are distinct from complicated problems. Samuel Arbesman, a complexity scientist, declares, “Complex is a large number of moving parts interacting in multifaceted ways.”³ The interactions are less well understood, and the relationships are often nonlinear. Because the elements are interacting in multifaceted ways, you can't necessarily predict what the results of those interactions are going to be.

Peter Ho is chairman of the Urban Redevelopment Authority in Singapore. His expertise on complexity informed his country's response to the threat of SARS in 2003, and he wrote:

The natural world is complex. In comparison, an engineering system – be it an airplane or a telecommunications satellite – is merely complicated.⁴

A complex system does not necessarily behave in a repeatable and predetermined manner. As a result, not only may a change to one part of a complex system yield unexpected results, but these results may be hidden. Think of the impact on your commute time of an accident just before a merge into a tunnel. Not only is the main route clogged, but so are the side routes and your secret cut‐throughs. Further, impatient drivers might start to take more risks, driving on the shoulders or swerving to jump lanes and causing new accidents. Many of these effects are out of your view, but they have significant impact on whether you arrive on time to your first meeting. Whether it is the complex queuing systems you rely on to get to work on time or the global supply chain, unexpected changes are difficult to plan for because of the sheer number of elements interacting in unpredictable ways.

Twentieth‐century problems were, by and large, understood as complicated. I believe that our most urgent twenty‐first‐century problems are complex (Figure I.1). The problem is when a leader tries to address a complex problem with an approach designed for a complicated problem (Figure I.2).

FIGURE I.1 Complicated vs. complex systems: Elements only.

Source: Everett Harper and Josh Franklin, 2021.

FIGURE I.2 Complicated vs. complex systems: Impact of adding one new element on relationships.

Source: Everett Harper and Josh Franklin, 2021.